There are some advertisements out there that will make people leave a page with very real haste. For instance, if you remember the advertisements that notified users that they may “have won!” something, you have some idea of what’s being discussed. There’s an important thing to keep in mind about advertising online or anywhere else: annoying your audience to get their attention isn’t always constructive.

Why It Doesn’t Work

Think of some of the most irritating advertisements you’ve seen. A certain insurance company often comes to mind—or, rather, their spokeswoman does—when this question is asked. Ask around a bit and you’ll find that some people, while they’re aware of the brand and the name of the company, will actually not buy insurance from them because they’ve been so irritated by the spokeswoman. The same applies to online advertisements.

Things that Tend to Be Annoying

There are some characteristics of annoying advertisements that you’ll want to avoid in your own:

Annoyingly bad humor
Irritating music
Flashing, blinking and otherwise eye-assaulting text and banners
Overused catchphrases
Grating stereotypes: only women care about cleaning products, for instance

Testing the Ad

One way you can avoid crossing the line into being completely annoying is to test out your advertisements. You can go through the trouble of having them focus-group tested, which is expensive, or you can just ask friends and family to take a look at them. Be sure you’re getting an opinion on the ad, however, and not encouragement from well-meaning people. Ask them if the ad is appealing or annoying and why. This can help you to avoid putting something on your site that will drive people away, or worse.

Rotate the Ad

Remember to rotate your advertisements. Particularly if you’re using video or audio to advertise online, you’ll want to have more than one ad you can run. This helps to avoid situations where people become so sick of hearing or seeing your ad that they’ll just avoid any page where it appears.

You’ll also want to know when to give up on something that’s not working. If you have a campaign running that’s not selling, it might be because the advertising is completely without appeal. Make sure you check your click-through rates, how many people are buying from the ad and other information so that you know when it’s time to try a new strategy for your advertisements. If you’re taking ads on your own site, Premium WordPress themes make it easy to rotate them in and out as needed.

About author

Anny Solway is a dedicated writer at ThemeFuse – a leader in the premium WordPress templates area. She likes to discover new ideas about internet marketing, social media and blogging.